THIS WEEKENDThe underwater action film U-571 successfully
defended its tactical position atop the box office charts despite incoming
attacks from three new wide releases to spend its second weekend at number
one. The Universal war pic grossed $12.2M according to final
studio figures, dropping a moderate 38% from its strong opening frame,
and lifted its ten-day cume to a solid $38.1M. U-571
will face tough competition for its core male audience in the
next two weeks with the arrivals of big-budget heavyweights like Gladiator
and Battlefield Earth. Look for the
$62M submarine adventure to soak up $70-75M domestically by the end of
its voyage.

Universal became the first studio in eight
months to have the top two films in the marketplace with the debut of their
family film The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas
which collected $10.5M over the weekend. Launching ultrawide in 3,040 theaters,
the $58M prequel to the 1994 blockbuster averaged only $3,460 per site.
Rock Vegas stars Mark Addy, Kristen
Johnson, and Stephen Baldwin and gets even more prehistoric by showing
the modern stone-age characters when they were young and single. The studio
hoped The Flintstones would benefit
by opening ahead of all the other major summer kidpics but instead registered
the second worst debut ever for a film opening in over 3,000 theaters.
By comparison, the original Flintstones
movie, which starred a more believable John Goodman as the Yabba Dabba
Dude, opened six years ago with a hefty $37.2M in 2,498 theaters over the
four-day Memorial Day weekend frame.

Bowing in third place with $9M was the time-shifting
thriller Frequency from New Line Cinema.
James Caviezel plays a man who contacts his father (Dennis Quaid) on a
radio living thirty years in the past and attempts to alter the present
by changing events in 1969. Frequency tuned
into 2,621 theaters and averaged a mediocre $3,444 per location. The $22M
drama enjoyed a good 32% Friday-to-Saturday jump and may hold up well in
the weeks ahead.

Where the Heart
Is, another new release, landed in fourth place with $8.3M.
Fox's dramedy about a single teen mother delivered a so-so $3,403 average
in 2,437 venues. According to studio distribution chief Tom Sherak, 70%
of the audience was female and exit polls showed 90-95% of women rated
the film "excellent" or "very good". Starring Natalie
Portman with Ashley Judd, Sally Field, and Joan Cusack, Where
the Heart Is cost Fox $9M to pick up and with the month of May
packed with mostly testosterone flicks, the pregnancy saga could generate
respectable numbers in the weeks ahead.

Dribbling down to fifth place was the romantic
drama Love and Basketball which took
in $5.1M in its sophomore weekend, dropping an understandable 37%, giving
it a ten-day score of $15.4M. Still claiming the second best average in
the top ten with $4,099, the New Line release should end its season with
roughly $30M.

Rules of Engagement
placed sixth with $4.6M pushing its cume to $50.2M. The Edward Norton-directed
comedy Keeping the Faith collected
$4.5M bringing its tally to $25.5M. 28 Days
followed with $4M putting the Sandra Bullock rehab story at $28.6M to date.

Slipping 32% to ninth place was the blockbuster
Erin Brockovich with $3.6M for a $112.9M
cume. Rounding out the top ten with the smallest decline as usual was Final
Destination with $2.35M giving the suspense sleeper $45.9M to
date.

Three very different spring offerings fell
out of the top ten over the weekend. The romantic comedy Return
to Me reached a cume of $25M and is on its way to a respectable
final gross of about $30M. The DreamWorks animated adventure The
Road to El Dorado has discovered $46.4M thus far and should
end up with about $50M domestically. The collegiate thriller The
Skulls has captured $32.5M to date and looks headed for a final
grade of around $35M, or about twice its production cost.

The limited release arena saw plenty of activity
over the weekend. Disney's IMAX hit Fantasia 2000
conjured up $2.1M during the final weekend of its record-setting four-month
run. The animated spectacle has grossed an amazing $49.6M from only 54
large format screens in North America and $63.9M worldwide. Fantasia
2000 will return for a four-week engagement in selected cities
beginning on June 16th in a conventional 35mm format. With a reported budget
of $85M, the lavishly-produced toon is successfully using unorthodox methods
in making its money back.

Also in limited release, Sony's experimental
film Time Code bowed with $93,148 in
seven sites for an impressive $13,307 per theater. The $4M Mike Figgis
picture stars Salma Hayek and Jeanne Tripplehorn and consists of four simultaneous
takes of an improvised story on screen together. Time
Code gets burnt into 16 new markets next weekend.

Opening in New York and Los Angeles this
weekend was the Kevin Spacey-Danny De Vito picture The
Big Kahuna which grossed $80,957 in eight theaters. The Lions
Gate release about dueling salesmen generated a robust $10,120 average
and will expand into seven more markets on May 12th and then march into
400 theaters on May 19th, according to distribution head Tom Ortenberg.

Paramount Classics added eleven more playdates
to the run of The Virgin Suicides and
collected $174,120 from 29 houses for a solid $6,004 average in its sophomore
weekend. Its cume after ten days is $496,995.

Compared to projections, The
Flintstones prequel came in a couple of notches below my $13M
forecast while both Frequency and Where
the Heart Is both opened close to my respective predictions
of $8M and $7M.

Coming on Wednesday,
May 3rd, will be the Summer
2000 Box Office Preview which will examine
all the major releases and their chances with ticket buyers this summer.

Take this week's NEW
Reader Survey on whether box office performance
affects your desire to see a movie. In last week's survey, readers were
asked which of seven summer films they were looking forward to the most.
Of 3,011 responses, 30% chose Mission:
Impossible 2, 28% picked X-Men,
13% voted for Dinosaur,
10% chose Me, Myself, and Irene,
9% selected The Patriot,
6% said Battlefield Earth,
and 3% went with The Nutty Professor II.

Be sure to read the
Weekly Rewind column which looks at the poorest
opening weekends of the year. This Wednesday's new column will report on
the biggest debuts in May during the last decade. For reviews of Frequency
and U-571 visit
The Chief Report.

The top ten films over
the weekend grossed $64.2M which was up 31% from last year when Entrapment
opened at number one with $20.1M, and up 41% from 1998 when He
Got Game debuted on top with $7.6M.

Be sure to check back
on Thursday for a complete summary, including projections, for next
weekend when the summer movie season gets an early start with Gladiator.

This column is updated three times each week
: Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary),
Sunday (post-weekend analysis with
estimates), and Monday night (actuals).
Source : EDI, Exhibitor Relations. Opinions expressed in this column are
those solely of the author.